TI's SimpleLink connects everyday objects with Wi-Fi

SAN FRANCISCO--The Internet of Things has long been a buzz phrase in the technology industry, with a bevy of experts predicting that someday soon, billions of mundane household appliances could be connected to the cloud, yet so far, that notion has remained right around the corner.

Texas Instruments, however, believes it has come up with the product needed to give the Internet of Things a kick start, with SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3000, a self-contained wireless processor to give developers a quick way to add internet connectivity to any embedded system using any microcontroller.

TI said SimpleLink, which uses an 802.11 network processor, will make it easy for people to add wireless connectivity to almost anything, from lawnmowers to dishwashers, allowing everyday products to connect up and share information.

Examples of what this kind of connectivity could entail include smoke alarms able to send text messages to home owners if they detect smoke while a person is away from home, or security systems that can email business or home owners when they detect intruders.

In the personal wellness sphere, applications could include blood pressure monitors that alert doctors when in-home patients’ levels spike or treadmills that connect to Web-based health services to track fitness progress.

Connectivity could even be used in personal items like umbrellas, which could connect to weather updates via the Wi-Fi network, and include an LED light that changes to “blue” if rain is expected.

SimpleLink CC3000 purportedly consumes just 0.5% of the resources of traditional Wi-Fi, with TI saying it uses just 6kb of flash and has just a 3Kb RAM software footprint.

The wireless processor also uses standard software APIs and has no need for an operating system, ensuring that it can be integrated into products within hours and just work. This, says TI, applies to both new and existing embedded applications.

“Wi-Fi technology has been around for more than a decade, but it hasn’t necessarily been accessible for most classes of product,” said Matt Kurtz, the channel marketing manager for TI’s wireless connectivity business unit.

“We realized that it was unreasonable to expect them to start running Linux and change to a high performance applications processor, so knowing the potential of the Internet of Things market, we rolled up our sleeves and rearchitected our existing Wi-Fi solution to make it suitable for any product – regardless of the architecture,” he said, adding that SimpleLink offered customers a “blueprint to connect even the simplest devices to the Internet.”

Its about time! This new generation of very small stand-alone MCM's (Red Pines also makes one) makes it much easier to incorporate WiFi into embedded devices. Previously, we had to either deal with Linux (MAJOR annoyance!!!) or use large and bulky devices. I look forward to using this module in combination with a Stellaris micro controller.

@gsdg90: I think TI beat others like STM and Marvell (in addition to Red Pine you cited) to the punch, figuratively speaking! I understand they are working on providing solutions for internet of things.
In fact, EE Times did a story in 2011 on Marvell's SEP:
http://www.eetimes.com/design/smart-energy-design/4229848/SEP--Smart-Energy-Profile--2-0-Uncovered
MP Divakar

The day is close where every man can put a web-cam on his dog Fido and hook'em to the internet with their own sound activated Twitter account and live stream to Fido's Facebook page. This is on big group of yet untapped users for Facebook - WiFi enabled PETS !!
Quick, I need to file a patent before Zuckerberg claims it was his idea...

You can get overview of CC3000 in TI's wiki website.
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/CC3000_Wi-Fi_for_MCU
Though the primary interface is SPI, I don't think it is SPI-WiFi-SPI bridge. I guess there might be simple commands (set SSID, set WEP key, send packet, etc) defined on SPI so your MCU can exchange packets over WiFi network.

Depending on the price, it's a nice way to get all sorts of little things connected. I'd love to be able to routinely have a look at the house thermostats. It's also likely to be cheap enough to get my wireless barbeque thermometer off the RF link it's using, and onto the house network.
The folks interested in smart appliance control need a really inexpensive solution... few white good manufacturers want to add dollars to their cost... nickels are more like it. My washer and dryer have a certain amount of internal diagnostics, but entering the diagnostic code enables involves dialing the controls back and forth... a nuisance. Would be much nicer to just look at the machine from my computer.
Lots of applications here if the connection is easy, fast and cheap.

Interesting... why not mention the cost per the thousand chips?
I've always day dreamed with the coffee machine that IM's every guy in the office when the coffee is ready!
Seems that the internet of things will be possible when cost of chips and ease of development are brought to a fair level.
To think of connecting household appliances and everyday common machines seems more of an enhancement and not something strongly required.
As mister's Lacovara's opinion, being able to see your laundry machine's diagnostics through your computer removes a nuisance from your daily routine... however... in the mean time we cope with such small nuisances at the expense of just a small amount of time.

Luis Sanchez: right you are--cost is a big factor here, particularly since a lot of the applications seem to be merely convenience functions. I'm not against convenience, but I'll only pay so much to not have to dial in a weird code to my washing machine. After all, how often do I have to do it?
Another issue, also, is that I really, really don't want this information going outside my home. These devices will all be connected through my router, and that's good for me as long as the data stays there. I don't need an information harvesting 'bot to take up residence in one of my machines or my router (or be put there by a chip manufacturer) to feed data on my home routine to anyone. I can think of all sorts of reasons to be paranoid about that.

isn't this internet of things going to overload the cloud servers with a lot of non-sense information? The baggage will soon become too heavy and the more important transaction oriented communications will get affected. That is what I fear!

I think the theory is that "things" will send a very small amount of data, not very often. So, like SMSs on Cellphone networks, the increase in traffic will be quite small compared to normal network traffic.

War is over. In the domain of Consumer Electronics it will probably kill other Wireless Technologies like Zigbee. Good thing or not? Now we can re-think operability. I like it. Still have to check the data sheet, BOM and software effort but it looks like no need no more for "Linux like systems" or Multi Chip Modules to do WiFi.

This would be great to control my sprinkler system. I could go onto my computer and program or adjust the watering times. You could even have a script that checks the weather online and adjusts the watering schedule accordingly.

TI is on the right track by betting on WLAN for such needs, Cellular connectivity is an overkill for most such needs.
What is needed to get Things off the ground is integration into a platform where such devices can be interacted with. Existing platforms such as Android, iOS are good candidates.
The interface needs to be a handheld device such as a smartphone or a tablet; not necessarily a laptop/desktop computer.